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Marc Jeannerod studied Medicine at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, France, and specialized in Neurology. He was awarded his MD degree in 1965. He got his research training in experimental medicine, studying the neurobiology of sleep under the supervision of Michel Jouvet, one of the discoverers of REM sleep. After his medical degree, Jeannerod became a research assistant in the Department of Anatomy at the University of California at Los Angeles, and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Hans-Lucas Teuber in the Department of Psychology. He subsequently became a professor of physiology at the University Claude Bernard Medical School in Lyon and headed the unit Vision and Motricity of the National Institute of Health and the Medical research (INSERM) until 1997. He then founded and headed the Institute for Cognitive Sciences of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) until 2003.

Marc Jeannerod's early work in neurophysiology and clinical neuropsychology has significantly contributed to new concepts that have impacted on the field of cognitive motor control and motor cognition, including motor imagery, and have led to new vistas for the understanding of higher-order motor disorders. Specifically, he has conducted a number of empirical investigations of clinical disorders including those of bimanual coordination, apraxia and sensorimotor transformation deficits, motor neglect, anarchic hand syndrome, and imitation.

More recently, studies conducted in Jeannerod's INSERM laboratory and CNRS Institute for Cognitive Science (French: institut des sciences cognitives) led him to advance an original account of the simulation theory in the context of motor cognition and motor imagery. This theory states that an action involves a covert stage, corresponding to its pragmatic representation, which includes its goal, the means to achieve it, and its consequences.[4] Further, such pragmatic representation may be activated under a variety of conditions in relation to action, either self-intended or perceived from other individuals. Even though this process may have a conscious counterpart (one can consciously generate a mental image), most of its generation occurs at the covert level. One persuasive source of evidence in support of this view comes from studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation that show that the mere observation of grasping movements results in the specific modulation of motor-evoked potentials.[5][6]